


White Space

by riventhorn



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 20:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riventhorn/pseuds/riventhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It didn’t matter what was outside the Walls. The only thing that mattered was what was on the inside.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Space

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the anime, OVAs, and oblique spoilers for later chapters of the manga.

_Papa, maman, je vous écris,_  
_que je suis arrivé dans Paris,_  
_Que déjà, je suis caporal,_  
_que, bientôt, je serai général._

Jean had been crying all morning because it wouldn’t stop raining. He pointed at the door, wanting to go outside. Sighing, Mathilde put down her mending and picked him up in her arms. 

“You can’t go out, Jean-bo,” she said. “You don’t want to get wet and cold, do you?”

Jean cried harder. “Out,” he demanded, his little fists plucking at her shirt. “Out!”

“Look at this,” she said, casting about for some form of distraction. She went over to the cabinet and opened it, picking up one of the little wooden figures standing there. Arnaud, her great-grandfather, had carved them. “See this little boy? What is he doing, Jean?”

Jean’s sobs faded into hiccups. He stared at the figure, nose scrunching in puzzlement. 

“Do you see the two sticks in his hands? He beats them against the drum he’s carrying, and it makes a loud noise, like this.” She made a pom-pom-pom noise that made Jean giggle. 

“What?” Jean asked, pointing at the hat on the little boy’s head. It was tall and rounded, with a tassel on top. 

Mathilde did not know why it looked that way, but she said, “Maybe it’s to keep his head warm.”

Jean considered this. 

“Maybe this boy went marching around in the snow, beating his drum so that anyone who was lost could find their way.”

Jean frowned and then shook his head. “Stupid,” he declared. “’Cause of the Titans.”

“That’s true, Jean. It wouldn’t be smart to make so much noise, would it?” She walked with him over to the window, and they both looked out on the rain. “Maybe he lived in a place where there are no Titans.”

“No,” Jean said. He rubbed his tear-stained face against her shoulder. “No place.”

Mathilde knew that once there hadn’t been any Titans, but she couldn’t fault Jean for not being able to imagine such a world.

*

_Dans la campagne je combattions_  
_les ennemis de la Nation._  
_Tous ceux qui devant moi s'présentions,_  
_avec mon sabre je l'z'èmondions!_

On his way to school, Jean passed a family of refugees standing in the street. It had been a month since Wall Maria fell, and it seemed like more and more people straggled into Trost every day. 

He stared at them—their ragged and dusty clothes, the hungry looks on their faces—and clutched the sandwich his mother had made him for lunch closer to his chest. Orders for stricter rationing had been issued yesterday. It might be a long time before he got to eat meat again. 

Jean sat in his usual desk in the classroom, on the end of a row with a good view out the window. But today, as the teacher explained how to multiply fractions, he found himself staring at the map on the wall. He had never liked that map. It showed the three Walls and all of the towns and districts within them. But outside of Wall Maria was a blank white space, which was stupid because there was _something_ out there. The world didn’t end beyond that Wall. People had stood on top of Wall Maria before it fell, and they had eyes, so they could have seen a few things at least. Even if it was just a forest or a big hill. They could have put those things on the map.

Today, though, he was staring at Shiganshina District where the Titans had broken through the Wall. And he was staring at Trost District, directly to the north. All the Titans had to do was walk in a straight line, and they would be here—right here, right outside the gate that he could see from his bedroom window. 

He looked further north, to Wall Sina and the Interior. The mapmaker had drawn a lot of detail here, marking every bridge and side road, filling the space with text and lines and circles. And then he understood. It didn’t matter what was outside the Walls. The only thing that mattered was what was on the inside. 

*  
_Passait par là mon général_  
_qui dit: "V'la un brave caporal!"_  
_Comme il voulait savoir mon nom,_  
_je lui ai dit: "J'm'appelle Pelot d'Betton."_

"I don't need all of these socks, mama," Jean protested, looking at the heap of wool piled next to his knapsack. “They’ll give us uniforms in the Training Corps.”

“I won’t have you out there in cold feet,” his mother said. “You’ll get sick and then where will you be? Snuffling in bed with no one to bring you soup.” She stuffed the socks into his knapsack, ignoring his scowl. “You have your comb and gloves?”

“ _Yes_ , mama.”

She turned to him and started fussing with the collar of his vest. Jean squirmed, trying to brush off her hands. 

“Look at you!” His mother beamed and patted his cheek. “My little boy, so grown up. Write to me every week, Jean-bo.”

“I won’t have time, mama. I’ll be busy training. If I want to get into the Military Police, I have to be the best.”

She tilted her head and adjusted one of his buttons. “A little note, Jean-bo. Otherwise I’ll worry.”

Jean huffed. “Fine.”

She smiled again and enveloped him in a warm hug. He tolerated it for a few seconds and then wriggled free, his hair ruffled. 

At the training camp, he found himself crammed into the barracks with all the other boys. It was loud, and he could hardly sleep with all the rustling and snoring, and in the morning everyone jostled to wash their faces at the water buckets. 

Jean sat on his bunk in the midst of the chaos, pulling on a pair of the socks his mother had knitted. He looked up and saw Armin sitting on the bunk across from him, wincing as he tied his boots. He had heard Armin telling Eren that he had gotten a blister on his foot after running and marching all day yesterday. 

“Here,” Jean said, tossing a pair of socks into Armin’s lap. “They’re thicker. Just don’t let Yeager touch them.”

Armin blinked and squeezed his fingers in the soft wool. 

*  
_Il tire de sa poche un beau ruban_  
_ou je n'sais quoi au bout d'argent,_  
_Et dit: "Boute-ca à ton habit_  
_et combats toujours l'ennemi!"_

Jean brushed the horse’s flank, cleaning off the dust and flecks of mud. It snorted, stamping a foot and swishing its tail. 

He’d never admit that out of all their duties, he liked taking care of the horses best. Eren would laugh himself silly and then spend the rest of the month teasing him mercilessly. 

Fuck Yeager for being an idiot. “Horseface” shouldn’t even be an insult. Horses had lovely faces with their deep, gentle eyes and soft, questing noses. 

Anyway, it wasn’t as though he would get to spend lots of time with horses after he graduated. He would be stationed in a city, not ranging over the countryside. Only the Survey Corps depended on their horses. 

For a moment, he thought of what that would be like—racing over the ground on horseback, a Titan pounding behind you. His stomach twisted. 

The next time he was supposed to curry the horses, he traded with Connie and chopped firewood instead.

*

_Faut qu'ca soit un signe bien glorieux,_  
_car tous les autres m'appellent: "Monsieur",_  
_Et mettent la main à leurs chapeaux_  
_pour saluer le gars Pelot._

Jean rested his arms on the back of the chair, rocking forward a little, and peeked at what Armin was sketching on a piece of paper. He should have been studying, as they had a test tomorrow, but he didn’t see much point in learning tactics for long-distance reconnaissance missions. The Survey Corps might manage a day or two beyond Wall Rose, but they were unlikely to ever get any farther.

Armin was drawing a strange looking fish. Jean had never seen anything like it before.

“What is that?” he asked, and Armin startled, covering up the drawing for a moment and then reluctantly letting Jean see it again. 

“It’s a dolphin.”

“A what?”

“A dolphin—they live in the ocean.”

Jean had heard rumors of an ocean before. He supposed such a place could exist, but why was Armin of all people interested in it? Armin might cling to Eren like a second shadow, but he was intelligent. 

“Why are you drawing a dolphin?”

Armin shrugged, flushed, and then said in a defiant tone, “My grandfather had a book that showed the world outside the Walls. I don’t ever want to forget what was in it, and so I draw the animals and plants to help me remember them.” His voice wavered a little, as though he knew Jean would think the next thing he said was ridiculous. “That way, when I see them, I can call them by their names.”

On some level, Jean could understand Eren’s desire to join the Survey Corps and kill Titans. He’d like revenge too, but he was rational enough to realize they weren’t going to get it. But this—this was an entirely new level of insanity. 

“Armin, you’re never going to see those things. None of us are.”

Armin didn’t reply, just started sketching his dolphin again. 

Jean watched him for a moment, and then shook his head and got up to go find Marco. They were on kitchen duty tonight and had better go over there now if they didn’t want to be late.

*  
_Maman, si je meurs en combattant,_  
_je t'enverrai ce bout de ruban;_  
_Tu le bouteras à ton fuseau_  
_en souvenir du gars Pelot._

Jean shook his leg, trying to dislodge Sasha, who was clinging to his ankle. 

“Please, Jean!” she wailed. 

He shook his leg harder. Sasha’s head bounced up and down, and her arms tightened. 

“All right!” he yelled, and Sasha instantly let go, springing up to hang over his shoulder as he started cleaning the fish.

The problem with winning a cooking contest was that then everyone expected you to produce delicious meals at the drop of a hat, no matter the circumstances. Such as when you were out on survival training in the middle of the woods with nothing but a flat rock and sharp stick to work with. And Sasha and Eren as your companions. And a river in which Sasha managed to catch two fish. And now wanted him to cook them for her.

If it had been Marco and Armin, Jean would probably have admitted defeat. But not in front of Sasha. Or Eren, who was poking at the fire and eyeing the fish hopefully.

Of course, it helped that all of them would accept “edible” in place of “delicious” as a gauge of his success.

When the fish was done—charred on one side, undercooked on the other—Jean was all set to take one fish himself and leave Eren and Sasha to fight it out for the second. Obviously, Sasha would win. But then he realized he’d have to sit there with Eren watching him eat every morsel of food. Eren would probably drool. It would be enough to put him off his fish, which would be hard enough to choke down as it was.

So he fended off Sasha and divided the fish evenly among them. 

“I thought your mother only taught you to cook omelets,” Eren said as they ate.

“And a few other things,” Jean muttered. He had no intention of revealing that every year on the first day it snowed, he and his mother baked cookies, the sugar saved and hoarded during the previous months. Or that he had once walked five miles to procure strawberries in order to make his mother’s favorite—thin pancakes filled with the sweet fruit. 

Eren had gone silent, though, staring into the fire, his eyes lit with the intense, fervent light that meant he was thinking about killing Titans. 

Jean picked out a few bones. If—no, when he got posted to the Interior, his parents would still be living in Trost. Trost that stuck out from the wall, just like Shiganshina. 

But his mother—his mother wanted him to join the Military Police. She told all of her friends that he was in the top of his class, of how well he was doing, of how he would be selected for the important duty of guarding the king and maintaining order. If he suddenly went crazy like Eren and told her he had decided to join the Survey Corps, she would be impossible—crying, pleading with him not to do it, completely distraught. He could never do that to her. 

 

*

_Dites à mes frères, à mes cousins,_  
_a mes amis que je vais bien,_  
_Que je suis votre humble serviteur;_  
_votre fils qui vous embrasse de coeur._

A deep, aching weariness filled his bones and his burning eyes. The stink of smoke from the pyres still clung to his uniform. But Jean couldn’t rest. He felt driven by some strange, manic energy. Maybe this was how Eren felt all the time. Guess he’d have the chance to ask him now. In the Survey Corps because he had said he would join, and he wasn’t going to back down. 

Yeah, the fucking joke was on him, wasn’t it?

It was probably dangerous to be walking through the streets of Trost, even though all the remaining Titans were supposed to have been eliminated. But he didn’t care. He needed to get to the gate. He’d seen it from afar, but he needed to be next to it, to touch the boulder with his own hands. 

When he got there, it towered above him, the air cool in its shadow where the morning sun couldn’t reach. It felt like…well, it felt like a rock. He rubbed his fingers over a rough, pebbled patch and then rested his forehead against it. 

He thought about how Marco had wanted to serve the king—had really wanted it. He thought about how he had wanted to live in the Interior, safe behind Wall Sina. 

Then he thought about Armin and his dolphin and started crying.

His and Marco’s dreams—those weren’t bad futures. They hadn’t been wrong to want safety, comfort, the respect of others, and the approval and pride of their parents. 

But they had been the _only_ dreams they’d had. The only ones. 

He pounded his fist against the boulder, hard enough to hurt and tear the skin. Marco had died in that narrow street, cornered with nowhere to run. But he’d lived his whole life that way, so why should his death have been any different? 

Jean didn’t care about dolphins or the ocean. But Armin did, and he should have the chance to see them. Bertolt, Sasha, Mikasa, Eren—all of them—they should have the _right_ to imagine a future that didn’t have only one ending. 

Later, when some of the chaos had died down, just before he was going to be transferred with the rest of the new recruits, he managed to find his parents in the muddle of evacuees from Trost. He told them that he’d joined the Survey Corps.

His mother held him for a long time, and his father rested his hand on Jean’s head. 

“You’ll come back to us,” his mother whispered, and Jean allowed himself to think that perhaps he might.

**Author's Note:**

> The song lyrics at the beginning of each part are from a French song, "La Lettre de Pelot de Betton," probably late 1700s or early 1800s. It just reminded me a lot of Jean. You can listen to it [here](https://youtu.be/wMcWto0C7s0). This is the best translation I can come up with (many thanks to seascribe for helping with it). If anyone has a better one, let me know.
> 
> 1\. Mother and father, I’m writing to you / to tell you I have arrived in Paris / I’m already a corporal / And soon I will become a general  
> 2\. In the country, I fought / the enemies of the Nation / I confronted them all, / and cut them down with my sword  
> 3\. As I passed my general, / he said: Here is a brave corporal! / He wanted to know my name / I told him: I am Pelot of Betton  
> 4\. He took a beautiful ribbon from his pocket / or some bit of silver, / And said: Wear this on your shirt / And always fight our enemies!  
> 5\. It is a glorious thing, / that everyone calls me “Monsieur” / And puts their hand to their hat / To salute Pelot  
> 6\. Mother, if I should die in battle, / I will send you this beautiful ribbon, / So that you can spin it into a thread / In memory of Pelot  
> 7\. Tell my brothers and cousins, / and my friends that I am fine, / I am your humble servant, / Your son who embraces you in his heart


End file.
